Back to All Creative Techniques
Technique N°1 - Generating ideas
A must read to think creatively.
At eÿeka we believe that everyone is creative as soon as one opens his mind and lets ideas flow freely. To help creators from everywhere tackle brand issues, we are providing you with Creative Techniques. Browse them, play with them and add them to your daily creative process to generate your best ideas!
To think fluidly and generate lots of ideas, here are some suggested principles:
- Defer judgement: While generating ideas, critical and judgmental thinking must be suspended. Focus your energy on finding ideas and bouncing your thoughts off others with fluidity and open-mindedness.
- Possibility vs. practicality: Try to get as many ideas before even thinking to evaluate, prioritize or judge them. Divide your ideation process in two separate mental operations: possibility thinking (generating ideas) and practically thinking (evaluating ideas).
- Quantity: A good idea occurs infrequently, so before evaluating one idea, it is better to have many ideas. In the same way, less creative ideas usually emerge more quickly. To get the best ones, more ideas must be generated first. To do so:
- Always set a goal when you brainstorm: 40 ideas or nothing!
- Keep a written record to remember your ideas and create connections between them
- Use ideas (yours and other people’s) to generate new ones: Build on the other’s ideas by adding detail, by combining them with yours, and by mixing them. This is the best way to be creative.
By applying these 4 guidelines each time you face a challenge, it will become part of your creative routine and help you generate your most creative ideas. Always try to apply those guidelines when brainstorming to as efficient as possible!
